The Auditor General’s report gives the final figures on cost of cancelling two gas plants to win votes, now it’s time to move forward with serious issues.

Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk releases her report on the costs of cancelling the Oakville gas plant project at Queen's Park in Toronto Tuesday.

Published on Tue Oct 08 2013

Now that Ontario’s auditor general has put the true cost of the gas plant cancellations at an astounding $1.1 billion, Premier Kathleen Wynne will be hard-pressed to find a way out of this sorry political saga. And what a mess it is.

The final tally is nearly double the $585 million figure that Wynne’s government previously accepted and light years more than former premier Dalton McGuinty’s original estimate of a paltry $40 million, a mere rounding error in the actual figure released by Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk on Tuesday.

As the Star’s Richard Brennan and Robert Benzie report, the audit shows a trail of bungling that started with the Ontario Power Authority’s refusal to listen to local outrage in Oakville and Mississauga. And it was compounded by the inexplicable decision by McGuinty’s office to promise TransCanada Energy Ltd. full compensation for the cancelled Oakville plant. Instead of simply allowing the contract to expire, the government chose to “ignore protections in the contract that could have minimized the damages,” says Lysyk.

Indeed, the auditor general concluded that the cost of cancelling and relocating the plant to the far-off town of Napanee could jump as high as $815 million. In any case, the owners of TransCanada Energy actually made more money from the cancellation than they would have if the Oakville plant had been built as planned. At least somebody’s happy.

Leading up to the 2011 election, when McGuinty’s people panicked at the thought of angry NIMBYs threatening their hold on several ridings, the Star opposed cancelling the plants, saying it would be a costly mistake. It remains to be seen just how expensive that decision will prove to be for the Liberals.

“The cost is significantly more than may have been necessary,” Lysyk reported. “A number of questionable decisions made along the way contributed to the situation.” Like all good accountants, she uses the power of understatement. After all, $1.1 billion speaks for itself.

Wynne has repeatedly apologized for the actions of the previous government while insisting she was kept out of the loop, although she was a member of cabinet when crucial decisions were made. But the gas-plant scandal has become the gift that keeps on giving for the opposition parties, making it all the more urgent for the premier to show Ontarians that she is capable of taking the province on a new path, toward greater prosperity, increased jobs and social justice. It’s the only way to change the channel on such devastating revelations.

In any case, many who embraced Wynne as a progressive new face for the Liberals are now wondering exactly when she will stop holding “conversations” and come up with a clear plan to fix the province’s problems – even in the difficult environment of a minority legislature. The political clock is ticking loudly and voters are watching impatiently.

There’s no contradiction that she now wants to be known as the “jobs premier” when last winter she preferred to be the “social justice premier.” Everybody knows that the best guarantee for a good and healthy future is a decent-paying job. But she needs to do more than make promises or rely on political gimmicks like the Liberals’ new online suggestion box for voters.

Wynne faces a fundamental decision – whether to allow herself to be defined by the long shadow of her predecessor and his decidedly mixed legacy, or to start taking the action of a leader with her own plan to move the province towards an economically vibrant future. This is no time for idle conversation.

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